No Fountain of Ruth in Sight for These Aging Yankees

This was a quarter after 11 on a sunny, breezy Yankee Stadium morning, and another captivating moment in the long and graceful goodbye of Mariano Rivera was about to occur.

Rivera had been chatting with a few Panamanian female fans in front of the Yankees dugout and then, standing on the top step, he signed balls for children in the front row.

From behind came a hand on his shoulder and another special request.

“Mariano, will you sign my shirt?” Jim Leyland said.

Leyland was 41 when he began managing in the major leagues in 1986 for the Pittsburgh Pirates — or 11 years before Rivera became the Yankees’ closer. He has been with the Detroit Tigers since 2006 and, at 68, is old enough and smart enough to know the sport will not see such a pitcher anytime soon.

He was kidding about the autographed shirt.

“I just want to say good luck,” Leyland said, his team about to play the Yankees for the last time this season and unlikely to cross paths again.

“Thank you, Mr. Leyland,” Rivera told the manager who last month held his American League All-Star position players in the dugout so Rivera could have the field to himself as he entered the game in the eighth inning.

They shook hands firmly, and Leyland went back across the field.

“He’s a great man,” Rivera said. “I have tremendous respect.”

Sentiment abounds outside the lines — sometimes the good kind, other times the bad — but once pitches are thrown, it is all about raw ambition and able performance. In the ninth inning on Sunday, in a game in which the notorious Alex Rodriguez was perhaps the best player, Leyland watched Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez hit homers to erase a 4-2 Yankees lead and saddle Rivera with his third straight blown save.

If it was somewhat bittersweet watching his sluggers humble the great Rivera, Leyland was left with only a sour aftertaste when Brett Gardner homered with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, his second game-ending hit of the series, for a 5-4 Yankees victory.

“It’s not very often you get Mariano Rivera twice in the same series and don’t win either game,” Leyland said.

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Mariano Rivera watched Victor Martinez’s ninth-inning home run Sunday. It was his third blown save in his last three chances.CreditBarton Silverman/The New York Times

Leyland could at least leave New York with his team comfortably ahead in the American League Central. The Yankees took two of three from the Tigers — who swept them in the American League Championship Series last season — and smacked Justin Verlander around in the process. But they are still lagging behind in the wild-card playoff race, and they mostly seem capable of producing sequels about dramas that are years old and controversies involving geriatric stars.

“Look, we’re going to fight all the way to the end,” said Rodriguez, feeling mighty spokesmanlike after his best day in recent memory.

Matched against other A.L. powers, the Yankees are the cast of “Cocoon,” looking for a miracle fountain of youth. Rodriguez, 38 and facing a long suspension for allegedly finding his at an anti-aging clinic in South Florida, homered off Verlander in the second inning, smacked a run-scoring single in the third and made a nifty backhand stab and throw across his body for a forceout at second that cut off a potentially big eighth inning.

The replay showed that the second base umpire, Will Little, blew the call, but Rodriguez still made a great play.

He was loudly cheered for the home run and booed for booting a soft grounder. Fans make it up as they go along, but the general rule in sports, as in politics, is that partisanship trumps principle.

Not that what fans think should matter much in the enforcement of rules. An arbitrator will determine how long Rodriguez — who was barred for 211 games by Commissioner Bud Selig — will go away for. The length of the suspension may determine how much of a career he has left on the other side, but if he continues to play as he did Sunday, the Yankees may yet be willing to keep a light on in the window.

Day after day, life becomes more existentially confusing for baseball’s most famous franchise. If only the goodbye of a crumbling dynasty that produced 5 World Series victories and 17 playoff appearances in 18 years could be as uncomplicated as it is with Rivera.

Rodriguez’s certainly figures to be the antithetical experience. Derek Jeter, still on the disabled list and headed back to Florida for more rehabilitation, has a player option for next season, and who knows how his exit from the Yankees will play out?

Andy Pettitte, who seems to live inside a revolving door, failed to last five innings Sunday and hasn’t looked as if he has much left lately. At 41, maybe he’ll depart with Rivera. So it goes on the big Bronx stage. The curtain on an era goes up and down, like the fans’ collective thumb on Rodriguez.

When Leyland managed in Pittsburgh, he had a promising team that was gutted by the free-agent defections of Bobby Bonilla and Barry Bonds. His 1997 Marlins championship team in Miami was dispersed the next season by a bottom-line ownership.

Other franchises in the Yankees’ position might already be shopping particular assets for young talent. But go ahead and say they should give up on 2013 and shop Hiroki Kuroda. Or, better yet, suggest they ask Rivera if he would accept a move for a chance to finish on a postseason stage and risk being run out of town.

Leyland — whose suspect bullpen wasted both ninth-inning uprisings against Rivera — would take him in a heartbeat. But that’s not happening. Rivera will continue saying goodbye with class. Lifers like Leyland will come to shake his hand. This 2013 season of Yankees discontent is likely to end in late September with an official fall from grace — for all but their closer.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: No Fountain of Ruth In Sight for These Aging Yankees. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe